The modem communications era has brought about a tremendous expansion of wireline and wireless networks. Computer networks, television networks, and telephony networks are experiencing an unprecedented technological expansion, fueled by consumer demand. Wireless and mobile networking technologies have addressed related consumer demands, while providing more flexibility and immediacy of information transfer.
Current and future networking technologies continue to facilitate ease of information transfer and convenience to and between users and other entities. With the aid of wireless and mobile networking technologies the availability of wireless communications devices has increased, due in part to reductions in cost of devices and the construction of infrastructures able to support these devices. Since consumers can more readily own and/or utilize a wireless communications device, the demands for dynamic functionality of these devices has increased. The marketplace has responded to these demands by providing increased functionality to the devices. For example, conventional communication devices can store various information and, as such, access control mechanisms can be provided to regulate access to the information for various purposes (e.g., read, write, execute, etc.). In this regard, each information can be provided with a privilege level which can dictate its accessibility, for example, to various applications. As such, a third party software (e.g., open source software) may be considered an non-trusted source (from the device's perspective). Therefore, the software can be isolated from other software and, restricted from accessing information and in its operation on the device.
However, these access control mechanisms are often complex and hence, difficult to understand and be configured by an ordinary user. Additionally, access control systems on the devices are often static. Moreover, the configuration of the access control mechanisms are based on the perspective of the device, instead of the user, and as such, access to information can be granted to the applications preferred by the device, while a third party software, preferred by the user for access to a desired information, may remain isolated and restricted from accessing to that information, since the integrity of that application cannot be ascertained by the device. One solution to this problem would be to grant all software (preferred and non-trusted) access to all information on the device. However, this solution would pose a serious security and privacy risk. Another solution would be to raise the access level of the third party software or otherwise decrease its access restriction. However, this solution would also pose a serious security risk (e.g., access to information that should be restricted to the software).
Accordingly, it may desirable to modify the privilege level of a system object, based at least in part on a user preference, while preserving the security architecture of the device.